NATIVE WOMEN JOIN FEMINIST MOVEMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 437, 20 August 1928, Page 13

NATIVE WOMEN JOIN FEMINIST MOVEMENT

MISSIONARY’S OBSERVATIONS SOLOMON ISLANDS CONDITIONS "The present world-wide movement for the independence of women is penetrating to the most remote places. The native women of the Solomon Islands are responding to it to an extraordi nary extent. I have noticed this particularly during the past two years.” The speaker was Miss Ida Wench, who returned on furlough from the Solomon group by the Southern Cross yesterday. It is two years since she enjoyed her last holiday leave, and for the past 19 years she has been attached to the Church of England Melanesian Mission. Miss Wench’s headquarters are at Siota, part of the island of Gela, but her work lies at the little island of Bungana, where she and two other white women are in charge of a girls’ school. There, for the past 12 years, the children have been taught in the native language. “I am not prepared to say whether or not this independence is a good thing among the native women,” said Miss Wench, laughingly, “but it is certainly gaining ground, and the women are receiving better treatment in consequence. “In the old days the native women would flee into the bush at the sight of a white man, but they are becoming much more friendly, and to-day they will approach and speak to a white man especially if he is a missionary. “The natives among whom we work are a sturdy people, although short in stature. Speaking generally they are a fine, intelligent type, and I have always found that the men possess an inborn chivalry towards white women. The white population on the islands is increasing, and many of the natives are being employed on the plantations I am sorry to say that these include a number of women—a fact that I deplore.” Miss Wench is finding that two years in a lonely part of the Solomons, far from fellow white people, makes one accustomed to the quietness and tranquility of the islands. To her, Auckland is a big and distracting city. “My mind is in quite a whirl with the bustle of it all,” she told a Sun representative this morning. “It is so different from the islands to which I have become used —so upsetting and unfamiliar.”